


Exposure

by AnaliseGrey



Series: Where Light Fears to Tread [11]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Dehydration, Exposure, Gen, Hallucinations, Heat Stroke, Public Punishment, Starvation, Sunburn, Torture, Whump, caleb's backstory, sun exposure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:47:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27551791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnaliseGrey/pseuds/AnaliseGrey
Summary: The town is small.While even little towns tend to have areas for public punishment- stocks, pillories, and the like- this one doesn't, too small even for the smallest of jails. What itdoeshave, he quickly finds out, is a space out in the open just outside the cluster of houses that make up the settlement. A space with a stake driven deep down into the earth and anchored in place, with an attached chain and iron collar on the end.
Series: Where Light Fears to Tread [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1441021
Comments: 26
Kudos: 72





	Exposure

**Author's Note:**

> Well damn. This was the result of a discord prompt and an hour and a half of feverish writing. Takes place in the time after Vergessen, but before Nott. 
> 
> No longer Bren, but not yet Caleb.

The town is small. 

While even little towns tend to have areas for public punishment- stocks, pillories and the like- this one doesn't, too small even for the smallest of jails. What it _does_ have, he quickly finds out, is a space out in the open just outside the cluster of houses that make up the settlement. A space with a stake driven deep down into the earth and anchored in place, with an attached chain and iron collar on the end. 

It's here that they drag him, struggling, though weakly. There's a _reason_ he was trying to steal bread, and it wasn't for fun. They throw him to the ground on the hard-packed earth and one of the men who dragged him here pins him to the ground while one of the others gets the collar around his neck and snaps a lock into place on it. The chain that now connects him to the stake isn't long, five or six feet at most, but the length doesn't really matter. There's nothing nearby that will help him except people, and they don't seem inclined to help him either. 

"Twenty-four hours. At the end of your sentence, you'll be free to go. And when that happens, you'll get yer ass out of town, if you know what's good for you." 

The small crowd begins to disperse, and he looks up, tracking the path of the sun. It's early yet, he knows, not quite gone 9am, but it's already broiling out; it's the height of summer, dry and hot, and today isn't shaping up to be any different. 

Twenty-four hours. Stuck out here with no shade, and likely no water. 

For the first time, fear settles in his belly, and he hopes he'll survive to complete his sentence.

He sits, for the time being, tailor-style on the ground, and thinks, trying to come up with anything he can use to his advantage, and it’s disheartening to realize how little that is. He has his boots, his patched and beat up trousers with rope to act as a belt, and his shirt, now torn from the scuffle as he was apprehended. He has no way to make shade for himself unless he takes his shirt off, but that would at best cover his head, and would leave his torso exposed to the sun, which is it’s own problem. He tries to be thankful that he’s not in a larger town, one with the resources to make a hot box. This is bad- _very_ bad- but that would be so much worse.

That thankfulness is difficult to hold onto a few hours later.

It’s nearing noon, the sun making its way directly overhead, and his head is killing him. It could be any number of things- hunger, dehydration, heat stroke or exhaustion. His arms and the back of his neck have begun to prickle unpleasantly with the start of sunburn, as has the top of his head. He knows he should try to cover his head, but he’s already going to be miserable, and the thought of putting his rough-woven shirt back on over a sunburned back makes him want to cry.

It’s hot, far hotter than he imagined it could get; he’s been spending his days sleeping in the shade during the hottest times of day and moving mostly at night for just this reason, but there’s nothing he can do.

Eventually he gives in, pulling his shirt up and over his head, though he can’t get it all the way off with the chain in the way. He has to, to protect his head, but also to put _something_ between the sun and the collar. The collar was already uncomfortably warm when they’d locked him into it, and has only gotten hotter as the unrelenting sun has beaten down on it. It burns his skin as surely as the sun does, and he bites back a whimper as he tries to pull the collar away so he can tuck the shirt inside. It’s too tight of a fit though, and he soon gives it up as a lost cause, just draping his shirt over his head and the back of his neck.

He’s not sure when he passes out, just that one moment he’s sitting there, thinking about how hot it is, how thirsty he is, how _tired_ he feels, and then the next he’s on the ground, face pressed into the dust. He knows he should move, should try to sit up again- by his guess it’s around two or three, some of the hottest hours of the day- and laying here spread out on the ground this way only exposes more of him to the sun, but he can’t. He tries, gods, he _tries_ , but he can’t, vision going warped and watery when he does, and he ends up collapsed back to the ground.

It’s bad that he’s not sweating, he thinks some time later. He hadn’t noticed it before, but he does now, noting how his skin is hot and dry, starting to blister in some places. An hour later he’s still laying there, telling himself that any minute now he’ll sit up again, any moment-

What rouses him again is the sound of footsteps, and when he looks there’s a man crossing towards the houses from the nearby fields. He forces himself up on shaking arms until he’s on his hands and knees; he doesn’t think he can sit back on his heels without toppling back to the ground.

“ _Bitte-_ ” he says, “ _Bitte! Bitte, Wasser. Ich werde nicht überleben, wenn Sie nicht-_ ”

The man glances over, and for the briefest of seconds he thinks the man might help, but there isn’t so much as a hitch in his steps, and the man soon disappears into the cluster of buildings.

He can’t bring himself to beg for mercy. He doesn’t deserve that. He has things he wants- no, _needs_ \- to do, and he knows he can’t do them if he’s dead, but this? This is the _least_ of what he’s owed, the barest of the suffering he knows he should endure. If he survives, then he survives. If he doesn’t-

Well, if he doesn’t, it won’t be his problem anymore, will it?

A few more hours. He just needs to make it a few more hours, and then the sun will sink below the horizon, and even if it doesn’t get much cooler, at least it won’t get hotter.

That doesn’t mean he isn’t miserably disappointed when the temperature barely drops as the sun sets, the shadows lengthening and drawing out to coat the clearing in inky blackness. The sun was terrible, but this is almost worse. There’s no moons right now, the night like pitch around him, and while there are stars twinkling in the heavens, they’re not enough to let him see anything around him, and he can’t help but feel like a sacrificial goat, staked out to lure predators away from the rest of the flock. He knows there’s things in the woods nearby that wouldn’t hesitate to rip his throat out and eat whatever meager meat is on his bones if given half a chance, and right now it wouldn’t take much; he knows he’s in no position to-

> _‘Fight back’, the man in his memories says with a sneer. ‘You’re letting_ this _stop you? Why am I wasting my time on you, Bren? If you are to be worth anything later you must be worth something_ now _. Now_ get up.’

He just doesn’t have it in him, all his reserves gone. His head pounds in time to his heartbeat, his skin feeling tight and hot, like the skin of a baked potato, ready to split. The sun is down, but somehow he still burns, he-

> - _burns, the straw catching and sparking off to the timbers beneath. The smoke is already rising into the sky, underlit by the flames that grow higher and higher, and no, no this is wrong. He thought it was the right thing to do, he was so_ **_sure_** _, he-_

-can feel it behind his eyes, embers under his skin, crackling, and all he can think is that it’s suitable, that it’s only appropriate that this is how he goes, burning like a harvest festival stuffyman.

He screams as he comes awake again, the shock of the well-cold water being dumped on him enough to make his heart stutter in his chest.

He’s confused, unsure what’s happening, but then there’s hands on him, and people around him gripping his arms with bruising force and it hurts, it _hurts_ , fingers digging in, uncaring of the sunburn as someone yanks the collar around on his neck to access the lock. There’s a faint click and then the metal is being pulled away and that hurts too, burned skin trying to stick. But it comes off, thrown to the ground with a heavy thunk and rattle of chain, and then they’re hauling him to his feet.

“Sentence is up.”

He’s shoved along and he trips over his own feet, goes to his knees, then all the way to the ground, his head spinning. He can’t- he _can’t_ -

“Get up.”

He shudders at the words, an echo of something flitting through his mind, but before he can get pulled back down into memory there’s a boot impacting with his ribs. He doesn’t feel anything give, and he curls, trying to protect himself, and one more kick catches him in the shoulder, pulling a croaking howl out of him as it hits a patch of brick-red blistered skin.

“I said _get up._ ”

Hands again, hauling him up, heedless of his cries of pain, and somehow he manages to keep his feet when they let go.

“Get. If you’re still here when I come back in fifteen minutes, the sunburn will be the least of your back’s problems, you hear me?”

He doesn’t nod, worried that if he does that will be his undoing, and he can’t wrap his mind around a whipping right now; it can’t be allowed to happen. He deserves suffering, he _does_ , but his sense of self-preservation is still unfathomably strong, and won’t let this be the end.

So instead he does the only thing he can.

He puts one foot in front of the other and stumbles away, forcing himself onward to whatever’s next.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Bitte! Bitte, Wasser. Ich werde nicht überleben, wenn Sie nicht..._ \- 'Please. Please, water. I won't survive if you don't-'
> 
> (as always, if my 'Zemnian' needs tweaking, please let me know!)


End file.
